Empty Embrace
by bcbdrums
Summary: She imagined her arms wrapped around his back and that his surrounded her, his hands gripping her shoulders for security. She heard him saying her name again with joy and unabashed relief, and she imagined her cheek pressed against his, the simple contact eliminating her fear. She imagined him smiling into her eyes, and she smiling back. And her lips pressing against his...


**_A/N: A tiny little one-shot that I wrote because...I wanted to write something. And this piece of angst got stuck in my head. Enjoy!_**

* * *

_"Wait, what...what happened? What'd I miss?"_

_"I think the side-kick just stepped up...monkey style."_

_"'Monkey style'? Ngh...what's that?"_

_"You had to be here..."_

Shego heard Drakken sigh again in the hover car above her, and a silent breath escaped her own lips as she glanced at the rain of flaming debris in the distance. She looked then at the teens still embracing in front of her, a contented smile on the boy's face.

In a flash she remembered being up on the ship, reaching out as the stars rushed by in the window glass...only for Drakken to stop and pull away at the last moment, even as she reached a little further in her relief.

A sudden chill swept her and she bent forward slightly as she hugged herself, gripping her arms tightly. The chill crept into her chest until it clenched around her heart and made her feel very alone in the midst of the destruction. And in front of her, the teens still embraced.

"Shego?"

She rubbed her arms once before glancing up to where the hover car was slowly descending. She knew that tone of voice like she knew her own. He was asking what she was waiting for, why she hadn't joined him yet, and if there was anything else he was missing in the present situation. Her only response was to hop up and swing herself into the car once it was low enough.

She didn't make eye-contact with Drakken as she sunk into the seat next to him, still holding herself tightly. Why did she suddenly want so much for it to be his arms around her? Why did it hurt so much that he'd pulled away?

"Nnh... Is...something wrong?" he asked.

She knew that tone, too. Suspicious, and distrusting. She sighed and shook her head.

"What's next?" she asked to deter him, still not looking at him.

He hesitated. She found herself holding her breath, hoping he wouldn't push it.

"I got all the robots in this immediate area. I guess we should spread out and try to get as many as possible, just in case."

She glanced sideways at him and took in his narrowed brow and the determined set of his chin as he sped the hover car to a higher altitude. There, they could get a better idea of where they needed to go. She wasn't even entirely sure where they were.

"Probably a good idea. Alien technology most likely has a fail- safe for if the control ship goes down."

She let one of her hands fall to her lap as she suddenly felt very numb. And at the same time, she was still yearning for Drakken to hug her the way Kim's boyfriend had hugged her.

_Why? He's not my... I've never thought of him like... Ew._

She rubbed the back of her head with her other hand and continued staring straight ahead as she felt Drakken's eyes on her.

"Something happen to your head?"

"Yeah. One of those aliens took a pot-shot and knocked me into some rubble."

He didn't say anything else, but she could still feel his eyes on her. The cold around her heart suddenly turned into an anxious prickling that crept through her stomach and across her skin all the way to her fingertips.

"You got anymore of that stuff? We could probably make better time if we split up," she said quickly, needing to break out of the bizarre awkwardness she was feeling. She wondered if he felt it too.

"Yes... We'll have to go back to the lair for it."

"How about...I get started here, and you go back to the lair," she said, thinking quickly. "I've got the jet pack."

"Nnh... Very well... But this was _my_ idea to save the world, I get all the credit!"

Shego snapped out of her funk at his words and she whipped around to face him, a fire in her eyes.

_"What!?_ You'd be dead on an alien ship if it weren't for me!"

He drew back suddenly as if she had slapped him, a scared-puppy look in his eyes rather than the anger or annoyance she had expected. In a rush, her fears that she would have been too late and that he would in fact be dead when she found him came back to her.

Something in her face must have betrayed her feelings because he cautiously came back to himself, blinking at her in dismay and unease.

It was the impasse they had found themselves at far too-often as of late. Somehow their lives had started transforming from bored bickering in between mediocre schemes to potential for actual conversation and somewhat normal human interaction.

This was the point where one or the other of them would always break. Either she with a bored dismissal, or he with a sarcastic accusation. And break they must, because a super-villain and his side-kick didn't have serious conversations outside of what would be her cut when he finally achieved world domination.

She waited for him this time. But he wasn't breaking. Which meant that it was her turn. But she didn't want to.

But...she did. But she didn't.

He frowned and looked away, and she silently released the breath she had been holding. He had risen to the occasion this time—

"Um..."

—or not. Shego instinctively leaned away from him, not about to engage in any sort of touchy-feely conversation he might be thinking of having. He was still facing away, but she saw his brow twist in uncertainty and he gave her a side-long glance.

"I...suppose...I should say...thank you. For coming after me," he finished with some effort. She could still only see part of his face, but his brow was still knit in worry. Perhaps he thought she wouldn't respond well to his sappiness. Perhaps he was struggling as much as she was...

Of course, she always had comebacks ready in the event of un-villain-like sap. She could say it was easier to bring him back alive than wait until he was dead and search for him then. She could say she only came because she was bribed by Stoppable since she knew how to fly a rocket. Or her favorite—that she wasn't actually coming for him, she was coming for Kim Possible to get her to save the world.

They were all on the tip of her tongue, but she didn't say them. What came out instead was a timid: "You're welcome." Followed by an appropriately indifferent shrug.

She hugged herself tight and looked away again, feeling again the strange absence of his arms around her—especially strange since his arms had never _been_ around her.

She stared without focus at the rubble below as the silence persisted, the only sound between them the hum of the hover car's motor.

"Um... Do you...want the hypollinator, then?"

She turned back and reached for his device without making eye contact with him. "Yes."

He divested himself of the backpack-style device and she stood in the craft as she slung the weighty machine over one shoulder. She didn't look at him again until she had turned on the jet pack and moved to about ten feet away.

"I'll cover the south," she said. It made sense, since he had to go north first to get more of his mutagen.

"And...I'll cover the north."

"Doy," she said, turning and heading down toward some of the red and black robots.

The hum of the hover car signaled his departure a few moments later, and she turned back to watch him go. The craft disappeared very quickly into the hazy skies, and he never looked back.

Shego hefted the hypollinator distributor on both of her shoulders and wondered how Drakken had managed to carry it. He wasn't a weakling, but he certainly didn't have her strength, and the device was at least sixty pounds.

Even with the weight of the device on her back, she still felt a strange hollowness and began rubbing her arms. Her mind flashed back to the alien ship again, and the way Drakken had recoiled when she had reached out to him.

She gripped her arms more tightly and imagined that he hadn't, that instead her arms wrapped had around his back and that his surrounded her, his hands gripping her shoulders for his own security and also for hers. She heard him saying her name again with such joy and unabashed relief as he had, and she imagined her cheek pressed against his, the simple contact eliminating the remnants of every fear she'd had from the moment the aliens took him until she'd seen him again.

She imagined smiling into his eyes, and him smiling back. And gently pressing her lips against his—

Shego's eyes flew open and she blinked several times at the rubble around her. She hadn't even noticed that she'd closed her eyes.

What on earth had brought on _that_ thought?

A sickening unease rooted itself in the pit of her stomach as she steered the jet pack and flew south to combat more of the alien robots. She shook her head to rid herself of the disturbing daydream as it continued trying to creep back into her mind's eye.

It must have been the fear that he'd be dead, she rationalized. And alien invasion. Those were stressors enough to cause freaky daydreams. She was fine.

And yet while she could banish that last, strange image, she couldn't get rid of the empty feeling around her causing her arms to remain tightly around herself and the questions still pressing against her mind.

_Why wouldn't he hug me? Why...do I want him to?_

fin.


End file.
